At one time, Rinaldi was a member of the WPCA board, sitting as Board of Finance liaison. But in 2010, when Rinaldi wrote the emails, that job belonged to former Board of Finance Chairman Joe Tarzia, who resigned in 2011 after his own ethics battles.

At the time, Tarzia had his sights set on the WPCA, which for years has been plagued by equipment failures, sewage spills, billing errors, poor collection rates, increasing debt and other mismanagement, resulting in significant sewer fee hikes for Stamford residents.

Tarzia said he wanted to move some WPCA employees from city hall on Washington Boulevard to the WPCA building on Harbor View Avenue.

In his complaint against Rinaldi, which launched the ethics board probe, Tarzia said he was concerned that some WPCA employees at city hall were not doing WPCA work, and some were not working at all.

Caporizzo was a WPCA employee whose work site was city hall.

So when he was the finance board liaison Tarzia emailed the former head of the WPCA, Jeannette Brown, saying he wanted to revamp the WPCA billing department.

Apparently Brown notified Rinaldi, because on March 23, 2010, Rinaldi wrote to Pavia, "You should be aware that Joe Tarzia is now targeting Connie's job in the WPCA budget. ... I am convinced that Joe is going after Connie because she is related to me. ... Appreciate your intervention."

The following day, Rinaldi emailed Larobina. "I have a call into the mayor to follow up on yesterday's email but wanted you to be aware of this situation as well."

On March 30, 2010, Tarzia again emailed Brown, saying he wanted to get going on reorganizing the WPCA billing department. "I want the services centralized and more accountability," Tarzia wrote to Brown.

Apparently, Brown again notified Rinaldi, because Rinaldi then emailed Larobina. "Joe continues to be hell-bent on attacking Connie."

Rinaldi may have had reason to think so. All kinds of political bad blood flowed in Stamford at the time, and Tarzia was in the middle of it. A month after the emails were written, the scrap-metal scandal broke.

Allegations that city employees stole city equipment and sold it for cash set off a political firestorm that resulted in police investigations and a volley of ethics violations and lawsuits, some of which continue today.

Tarzia has said that the ethics complaints lodged against him in the scrap-metal scandal were a conspiracy to oust him for trying to expose nepotism and corruption in city hall. Political infighting aside, if Caporizzo were not the relative of a longtime elected official, would her plight get the attention of the mayor and the corporation counsel?

On March 31, 2010, Brown wrote Tarzia an email indicating that Caporizzo would stay where she was at city hall.

"It is my understanding from (Director of Operations Ernie Orgera) that the mayor does not want this move," Brown wrote Tarzia. "Please check with him."

But Tarzia isn't the only one to charge that Rinaldi intervened to protect Caporizzo in her job.

Last year, WPCA Administration Manager Rhudean Bull filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commssion alleging 10 counts of discrimination against WPCA and city administrators. Bull's complaint, now in federal court, describes all manner of mismanagement at the WPCA and alleges that she was kept out of key meetings, her authority was undermined and she was set up to take the blame for WPCA failures.

In one of the counts, Bull describes problems with Caporizzo, a permanent part-time employee who earned $49,000 last year.

"The employee continued to work beyond her scheduled work hours without authorization from me and consistently came to work late," Bull wrote in the complaint. "There are documented excuses such as, "I can't find a parking space in the parking garage" and "The traffic is terrible on Hope Street that time in the morning."

Bull wrote that she confronted Caporizzo, who "became upset, stating that she was going to call Mary Lou" Rinaldi.

Bull's complaint states that Caporizzo failed to properly enter some data into the computer system and "calls started coming in from customers who no longer owned the property for which they had been billed."

The WPCA then outsourced that work and Caporizzo "yelled at me stating she heard that ... I was doing nothing all day and that she was calling Mary Lou about this," Bull wrote.

When the billing vendor notified Bull that Caporizzo was continuing to enter certain data incorrectly, Bull told the vendor to change Caporizzo's computer settings so Caporizzo no longer had access to the files, according to the complaint.

The following day, the vendor contacted Bull to tell her that Rinaldi "had sent an email to him, the vendor, to instruct him to reinstall (Caporizzo's access) because she needed to be able to assist customers as a part of her job," Bull wrote.

Rinaldi's interference violates the Stamford Code of Ethics, Bull charged in her complaint.

Rinaldi did not return a voicemail Friday evening requesting comment.

The Board of Ethics is to schedule a hearing on the Tarzia complaint against Rinaldi by next month.

Members of the Board of Representatives are working on an ordinance to prohibit elected officials and city supervisors from hiring or promoting family members. The board's Personnel Committee is to schedule a public hearing on the proposed ordinance for next month.